PRESIDENT CLINTON: Good morning. This morning I want
to talk about the responsibility we share to protect our children from
the scourge of violent crime, and especially from crime committed by
other young people. We've all worked hard over the last four and
a half years to prepare America for the 21st century, with opportunity
for all, responsibility from all our citizens, and a community that
includes all Americans. Because of these efforts, America's children
face a brighter future. Economic growth is the highest it's been in a
decade. Unemployment is at its lowest level in 24 years, with over 12
million new jobs.

Last Friday we reached an historic agreement to finish
the job of balancing the budget, to keep our economy thriving, with the
biggest investment in education in 30 years, tax cuts to help pay for a
college education for all Americans, and health care coverage for 5
million children who have no insurance now.

But with all these advances, our children cannot live
out their dreams if they are living in fear of gangs and guns. That's
why I have worked so hard to reverse the tide of crime. We passed the
tough Crime Bill that's putting 100,000 new community police on our
street. We passed the Brady Bill, which has stopped over 186,000
felons, fugitives and stalkers from buying handguns. We banned deadly
assault weapons. We initiated the biggest antidrug effort ever to make
our children, schools and streets safe, drug-free and gun-free.

This strategy is working. Serious crime has dropped
five years in a row. But, sadly, crime among young people has been on
the rise. According to a report by the Justice Department's juvenile
division, unless we act now, the number of juveniles arrested for
violent crimes will more than double by the year 2010. That means we
must launch a full-scale assault on juvenile crime based on what we now
works.

This February I sent legislation to Congress that would
declare war on gangs with new prosecutors and tougher penalties. It
would also extend the Brady Bill so that someone who commits a violent
crime as a juvenile is barred from buying a gun as an adult. It would
require that child safety locks be sold with guns to keep children from
hurting themselves or each other. It would help keep schools open after
hours, on weekends and in the summer to keep children off the streets
and out of trouble.

This is a tough and balanced approach based on what is
actually working at the local level. In Boston where many of these
efforts are already in place, youth murders have dropped 80 percent in
five years, and not one child has been killed with a gun in over a year
and a half.

Unfortunately, this Thursday, the House of
Representatives passed the Juvenile Justice bill that falls far short of
that promise. The House bill is weak on guns and it walks away from the
crime prevention initiatives that can save a teenager from a life of
crime. And as drafted, it would actually only reach a few states with
the good it does do.

The House bill does not ensure the new antigang prosecutors
we desperately need to pursue and punish violent juveniles. It does not
support efforts, such as Boston's Operation Night Life, where police and
probation officers make nightly visits to the homes of young
probationers to make sure they live up to the strict rules of their
probation. The bill does not fund anticrime initiatives to keep our
schools open later and on weekends so young people can stay under the
watchful eye of parents, educators and community leaders instead of on
street corners where the most common influences are bad ones. We know
juvenile crime peaks right after the school day ends. We've got to
engage our children during those hours, to steer them away from gangs.

You know, just a couple of weeks ago I sponsored the
Service Summit in Philadelphia, along with all our former Presidents and
General Colin Powell. The summit was dedicated to giving every young
America to make the most of his or her life, enlisting millions and
millions of volunteers to guarantee children a healthy start, access to
basic skills, a mentor, a safe environment and the chance to serve
themselves. Republicans and Democrats alike applauded this summit. It
highlighted successful efforts to guarantee children a safe environment.
Now, this bill the House passed ignores the real spirit of the summit.
It's bipartisanship and it's focused on what works.

The plain evidence of what is working right now to save our
children is nowhere apparent in this bill. It's the same old tough
rhetoric without any prevention, without any change in the environment
to make it harder for gangs to function, or without real toughness in
every state in America. Perhaps most troubling, the House bill rejects
my call to cut off young people's access to guns, now the third leading
cause of death for young people between the ages of 13 and 24. We must
begin with the simple precaution of child safety locks. It's
heartbreaking when a gun owned by a law-abiding parent is used by a
child to hurt themselves or others.

According to a National Institute of Justice survey, 185
children died in 1994 because of accidental shootings. Now, if we can
have safety precautions to prevent children from opening bottles of
aspirin, surely we can have the same safety precautions to prevent
children from using guns.

Extending the Brady Bill is critical as well. If you
commit a violent crime as a 17-year-old, you should not be able to buy a
gun on your 21st birthday. I challenge Congress to pass a real juvenile
justice bill, one that's tough on gangs and tough on guns and is serious
about the kind of prevention efforts we know will work.

To me, a juvenile justice bill that doesn't limit
children's access to guns is a bill that walks away from the problem.
Not a single hunter would lose a gun because of child safety locks. Not
a single law-abiding citizen would be denied a gun if we extend the
Brady Bill to those with violent juvenile records. But countless young
lives would be saved if stolen guns became useless guns and if lawless
juveniles became gunless adults.

If Congress really wants to get tough on juvenile crime,
then it's time to get tough on guns and take them out of the hands of
violent juveniles. We've come a long way in the last four and a half
years. But to really make sure we prepare our children for the 21st
century, we have got to give them a safe and orderly environment where
they can make the most of their future and of the world they will soon
inherit.